


I Am Not There, I Did Not Die

by clear_sight



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I'm not entirely sure what this is., Inspired by a poem, Post-Reichenbach, Spontaneous drabble, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-11
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-07 12:20:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clear_sight/pseuds/clear_sight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock's death, John begins receiving strange messages.  At first they're merely odd, then they become threatening when they start showing up in 221B.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am Not There, I Did Not Die

**Author's Note:**

> Sherlock belongs to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the modern adaptation to Moffat, Gatiss, and the BBC. The poem is by Mary Elizabeth Frye.

The first time it happened, John could dismiss it.  After all, he wasn’t the only person who visited Sherlock’s grave.  And even if the paper did look for some reason troublingly familiar and the handwriting looked _exactly_ like Sherlock’s, well, he had never actually seen Mycroft’s handwriting and they were brothers after all.  Besides, it was just two lines of words.  The first two lines of a poem.  A poem about bereavement, left on Sherlock’s headstone.

_Do not stand at my grave and weep_

_I am not there.  I do not sleep._

John wasn’t sure what possessed him to pick up the slip of paper, a weighty, off white letterhead he could almost place, and slip it into his coat pocket.  It hadn’t been meant for him – it had been left on Sherlock’s grave, after all – and yet for some reason he couldn’t help feeling that it had been.  Upon arriving home, he tucked it away on the mantel behind the skull.

 

Spring passed.  Summer came and went in a flurry of rainstorms and children with broken bones.  Autumn arrived and then melted into winter.  Nothing much changed.  John was working whatever hours he could bring himself to at the clinic.  Mycroft, despite John’s repeated refusals, was making up what John couldn’t of the rent and he was still living at 221B.  The elder Holmes had come for all of Sherlock’s text books and science equipment, the things Mrs. Hudson had wanted donated but had no idea what to do with.  The flat seemed strangely empty without the clutter.  Stranger still was the fact that while Mycroft had taken Sherlock’s scholarly items and his personal effects – clothes and everyday items that Sherlock carried everywhere – he had left everything else.

John had been contemplating this for the better part of a week now.  It had been eight months since Sherlock’s suicide.  At first he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of changing anything in the flat, but now he was wondering if perhaps he should.  He should get rid of the skull for sure.  As to the violin, he should either donate it or perhaps learn to play it himself.  Probably the latter.  It had been practically Sherlock’s child.  John just couldn’t see the man being happy with the idea of anyone else having it.  He could barely see Sherlock being happy with the idea of him having it, but he thought Sherlock would probably prefer him to a stranger.

It was these thoughts that occupied his mind as he got ready to leave the clinic.  He was so preoccupied with them, in fact, that he nearly missed the slip of paper on his desk.  It sat atop his files and paperwork, innocuous and yet somehow terrifying because _that shouldn’t be there._   It jolted him back to memories of eight months ago and finding a nearly identical slip of paper on Sherlock’s grave.  It was the same weighty, off white letterhead.  Just a sliver of it, with the same untidy and yet refined scrawl.

_I am a thousand winds that blow._

_I am the diamond glints on the snow._

Many emotions flashed through John’s mind at that moment.  The first was hope, lunacy that it was.  The second was rage.  Obviously someone was having him on and he did not appreciate it.  The third was fear.  He knew it wasn’t Mycroft – this was beneath Mycroft – but he couldn’t help being afraid he was being stalked.  After all, he had once been intimately connected with the great Sherlock Holmes and even though Sherlock was dead that still made him a target.

He took the tube home from the clinic in a state of alarm.  He had debated a cab, despite the added cost, but then his mind had drudged up the events of _A Study in Pink_ and he couldn’t get the face of their killer cabbie out of his head and he had decided that if someone _did_ happen to be stalking him then the last thing he wanted to do was get in a cab with them.  The tube would be at least a bit safer for its large crowds of witnesses.  When he reached 221B, frantic with worry by that time, he tucked the slip of paper behind the skull with its companion and went to take a hot shower to help ease away his stress.

 

Eight more months passed uneventfully.  Winter thawed to spring.  John’s part time clinic job fell through.  “Too unreliable,” Sarah had said apologetically.  Too many days late or seemingly mentally absent.  Mycroft insisted upon keeping up the rent on 221B and John set to work looking for any kind of job he could find.  Spring blossomed into summer and John spent his first night in the graveyard.  It wasn’t so much that he slept at Sherlock’s grave – he didn’t sleep – he just sat and stared at the black stone until it had nearly blinded him catching the reflection of the rising sun.  Summer had begun to ripen into Autumn.

It was at that time when John finally found work at another small clinic.  It was farther away than he would have liked, but it was a job.  Things were going well.  He had been very careful.  Made sure to set several alarms and work to keep himself focused.  He was determined to retain this job.  And he was confident that this time he would manage.  He had just been given more hours.  He was on the tube headed home from work one evening when it happened again.  He put his hand into the pocket of his coat and was confronted with a familiar and very specific texture.  He withdrew the slim, off white slip to read what was written there.

_I am the sunlight on ripened grain._

_I am the gentle autumn rain._

When he reached 221B he called off work the next day.  Mycroft called him back on, texting him to inform him.  He insisted that John needed to strive to keep this job for the sake of his self-worth and that he would make sure John was monitored so that nothing would happen to him.  And so John went the next day.  And sure enough, there was a non-descript black car parked just far enough from the clinic to not arouse suspicion.  And nothing happened, except that John kept his job.

 

And John continued to keep his job.  He gained hours and needed Mycroft’s assistance less.  He seemed happier overall when he was doing something. Every so often he would see Mike Stamford or Lestrade or sometimes even Molly.  Finally he was starting to feel whole again.  He had organized the flat, but didn’t end up throwing too much out.  He couldn’t bear to part with it and since Mycroft, irritating sod that he was, insisted upon paying Sherlock’s share of the rent for the place, he didn’t have to worry about scaring off potential flatmates.

Three months passed this way.  John was healing.  John was finally learning to be happy again.  Finally learning that the world could continue without Sherlock in it.  That it was alright to breathe.  He wouldn’t drown it he tried.  All he had to do was keep his head above water and not let it drag him down.  Just let the memories be memories.

It was the morning after the annual 221B Christmas party.  Mrs. Hudson had invited Molly, Lestrade, Mike, even Sarah.  John had been there, been welcoming and cheerful, and tried, largely although not completely successfully, not to think about how there would be no Christmas carols on the violin this year, just as there were none last year.  He had gone to bed with a very strange feeling in his chest.  It was joy and contentedness underscored by a dark, bitter-sweet note of sorrow.

He had the strangest impression that the window had been opened sometime during the night.  Vaguely he could remember the cold.  He thought, too, that he remembered a shadowy figure in the room with him.  Silently laughing the whole thing off as one too many readings of _A Christmas Carol_ , he shifted to set his feet on the floor.  And caught sight of the slip of paper on the nightstand.

Like a shot, John was out of bed, phone in hand, dialing Lestrade’s number.  Not the police.  He didn’t want to go to the police just yet.  But he certainly wanted the DI to be informed of these goings on.  Besides, he wanted to be able to talk to someone about the events of the last year and a half.  He could almost swear he was going mad with all of this.  It was the most insidious kind of torment.  To taunt him with this, with the memories of the person dearest to him, to hold out just the barest wisp of hope and at the same time use it to make him feel unsafe at home and at work and in every place he had to be in his day to day life.  And not only that, but to go months between incidents.  To leave him alone just long enough to forget and go back to his normal life before coming back with another reminder that he wasn’t safe anywhere… it was cruel on a level John thought Moriarty would have been quite pleased with.

Ten minutes later, John was dressed and out the door, on his way to meet Lestrade at a nearby diner.  The window, never checked in his haste, was still unlatched, just as John had accidentally left it the previous night, and the slip of paper lay forgotten on his nightstand.

_When you awaken in the morning’s hush_

_I am the swift uplifting rush_

 

Two more months passed.  The worst part of winter was cold and heavy upon them.  John had whittled down his hours at the clinic and started spending more time with Lestrade.  He had learned to notice Mycroft’s people.  He felt as though he was starting to come apart.  It was the break-in at Baker Street that had done it.  When strange things had shown up at work, that was one thing.  There were rather a lot of people through clinics all the time.  But work offered him some protection in the form of crowds.  But a message left in his flat, in his bedroom no less, that was too much.

And so when he found yet another slip of paper, this time in his tea kettle when he went to make an evening cup of tea, he resigned himself to leaving Baker Street.  Despite the lateness of the hour, he called Lestrade, telling him that there had been another break-in identical to the one on Christmas Eve.  Then he phoned Harry and asked for a place to stay for a couple of days and made sure Mrs. Hudson had phoned her sister.  He called the clinic and left a message explaining what had happened and that he wouldn’t be in for his shift the next morning.  And meanwhile the slip of paper sat all but forgotten on the kitchen counter.

_Of quiet birds in circled flight._

_I am the soft stars that shine at night._

 

Two years had passed.  Two long, arduous years since John had watched his best friend jump to his death from the roof of St. Bart’s.  Most of his things were in boxes back at 221B.  Most of Sherlock’s things that Mycroft had never collected were in boxes right along with them.  This was to be the end.  At least, in John’s mind it was an end of sorts.  For two years he had refused to move out of the flat where for eighteen months he had lived with Sherlock.  Where for eighteen months he had had adventure and wonder and danger and intrigue and perhaps the deepest bond he had ever shared with anyone.  Where for eighteen months he had once more felt alive and remembered what it truly meant to live.  For two years he had clung to hope, had clung to the flat as a refuge and a sanctuary.  He would be moving at the end of the week.

It was as he reached out to lay a hand on the large black stone that he noticed the slip of paper.  It was just the same as all the others.  He didn’t even hesitate to pick it up, no longer surprised by this point.  The only surprising thing was that the last one had come only a month ago.  The time between was getting shorter. 

_Do not stand at my grave and cry;_

_I am not there.  I did not die._

But this was the end of the poem.  He had looked it up.  Mary Elizabeth Frye’s _Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep_.  But what now?  What would be next?  Quickly he stuffed the paper into his pocket and turned toward 221B.  He had a nagging sense that something was off.

When he arrived back at the flat, the door was unlocked.  That in itself wasn’t unusual.  Mrs. Hudson had taken to coming by and checking in on him over the past few weeks.  However, he could hear Mrs. Hudson downstairs in her flat.  As quietly as he could, John swung the door open just wide enough to see into the flat.  Later, when he could speak again, he would swear he had felt his heart stop for a moment.  There at the window stood a tall, slim, impossible figure.

Hearing the soft creaking from the door to the flat, Sherlock turned to smile at the army doctor.  “I hope you weren’t actually planning on leaving.  I’ve only just gotten home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't have a clue where this came from. Not a clue. This is four pages of drabble is what this is. There's been a lot of this poem going around Tumblr related to Sherlock, so I decided to hop on the bandwagon. So that's about it. Hope it wasn't as awkward as I'm kind of afraid it was.


End file.
